With a pair of deadlines looming, North Carolina is suing to try to regain control of a nearly 2,000-acre Chatham County economic development site from VinFast.
The suit alleges that the Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer won't be able to have its planned car manufacturing facility open by July 2026 or employ 1,750 people at the Moncure site by the end of this year.
Those deadlines are both part of an option built into the state's sales agreement for three parcels that make up the megasite. By failing to meet them, the state is able to re-purchase the site.
“VinFast agreed to build a factory and create jobs for North Carolinians – it didn’t do either. When North Carolina makes a deal, we build in protection for taxpayers. VinFast broke the deal, so we’re using that protection to find a project for this site that will create jobs," Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, wrote in a statement.
VinFast has said publicly that it could open the factory by 2028, two years after the deadline in its agreement with North Carolina. State officials wrote in their lawsuit that they did not agree with that timeline and are skeptical that VinFast would even be able to meet that target.
State officials also allege that while VinFast cleared the site of trees in 2023, it stopped any further work there in December 2024.
"VinFast has failed to take any concrete action that shows it can and will fulfill its obligation to the State. VinFast abandoned work on the site for over a year. Not only did the Company fail to create jobs — it made zero progress towards the construction of any buildings or structures," says the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Wake County Superior Court.
A request for comment sent to VinFast's general communications portal was not returned Thursday afternoon.
VinFast was founded in 2017 and quickly looked to open a factory in the United States. When the Chatham County factory was announced in 2022, VinFast said it expected to finish the first phase by 2024.
At the time of the 2022 announcement, VinFast was the largest economic development project in North Carolina history. VinFast said it planned to invest $4 billion and employ 7,500 people. The site would feature not only a car factory but also a bus manufacturing facility and an electric vehicle battery production plant.
The company's agreement with North Carolina required that it construct vertical buildings by 2024. That did not come to fruition, with the lawsuit alleging that VinFast has not built any buildings or structures on the site.
“VinFast has not fulfilled its commitments. Today’s action is about protecting taxpayers and getting the Chatham County mega-site back on the market to support future good-paying manufacturing jobs," Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat, said in a written statement.
As part of the economic development package, the N.C. General Assembly appropriated $450 million of taxpayer dollars to the project for site preparation.
North Carolina is alleging that VinFast's failure to make progress on the site for a full calendar year means that it can claw back about $80 million in state funds that it sent to the company for grading and other site preparation.
